Album Review: Taylor Swift Lets Her Young Heart Speak for Itself in ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’

Coming out of the lavender haze of Midnights, Taylor Swift breathes new life into one of her oldest and most underrated records, Speak Now.

Written by Isabel Alvarez

Taylor Swift is undeniably dominating the world of music. In just the past year, she has dropped her tenth original album Midnights, has sold out several stadiums for multiple-night-stints across the U.S. for her "Eras" Tour, and now has officially released re-recordings for half of her first six albums. The singer announced Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) at her May 5th show in Nashville, where she announced the original Speak Now in 2010.

Thirteen years ago, when Speak Now was originally released, Swift was at a tense point in her life and career. Entering her 20s as a four-time Grammy winner, the singer had eyes peering at her from seemingly every corner while most people her age are practicing self-exploration and freedom. She navigated the regular things that come with growing up: living on your own for the first time, loving beyond the childhood archetypes, and learning your own worth, all the while, tabloids and critics waited for the tiniest slip-up to send her falling. Critics were trying to knock her for things like dating too many guys and not writing her music all by herself, but she held her head high, even if it was difficult at times. She wrote and riffed until she came up with Speak Now, for all the things she wished she said but did not. Now, rerecording her first completely self-written album, Swift speaks of these fraught times in such a matured voice, reflecting on them by being a cheerleader for her old self and feeling grateful for who she was able to become getting past that time.

Speak Now balances harsh realities simultaneously with a world through rose-colored lenses. Her diverse portfolio of emotion manifested itself into honest lyricism that allows her to look back on her experiences overall with kind eyes. Also marking a shift into more independence with her artistry, the country record is not shy to experiment with different sounds, like the fantastical love-stricken ballad “Enchanted,” the bitter pop-punk song “Better than Revenge,” and the scathing gothic pop carol “Haunted.” Although the album did not get nearly as much hype as Fearless, the record spoke as a testament to who Swift was and could be as an artist as well as the depth she had as a person. Though the record came as a testament to Swift’s depth, she is relentlessly faced with misogyny and degradation, but she set a foundation for herself to build an empire. The refreshing thing about the rerecording is she is no longer someone trying to prove herself — she is who she says she is and anything besides that is not on her radar.

It goes without saying that Swift is a lot more confident in her sound than when she wrote the album in her teens. Her voice is so much fuller, leading to less layering in the production. Also, only a few speckles of her old, subtle country twang come through, like in “Give me something that’ll haunt me when you’re not around” from “Sparks Fly” and the punchy banjo verses of “Mean.” The instrumentation is more whole and vibrant than in the original Speak Now, especially the string noises. Even in the first couple seconds to the opening song “Mine,” the acoustic guitar strumming has much more texture than the 2013 version. Also in fan-favorite “Back to December,” the violins whirring in the chorus are now at the forefront. Unlike in Red (Taylor’s Version), the added flares to the original tracks were not outstanding hits or misses, but instead, her initial songs feel refined by her current craftsmanship. The only thing that made a rift between the blend of the new and old was how some of the songs tonally do not match the maturity in her voice today, making songs like “Mean” feel a bit childish and “Never Grow Up” sound like a lullaby.

In addition to changing some of the production, she also replaced a misogynistic lyric in “Better Than Revenge,” which she surprisingly got flack for changing. The song devilishly retells how Swift believes her boyfriend left her by becoming wrapped around another girl’s finger, but in Taylor’s Version, she swapped the line “She's better known for the things that she does on the mattress” with “He was a moth to the flame / She was holding the matches.” Like with Red (Taylor’s Version), Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is revived in a time when the focus is less on the woman who got wrapped up in the situation and more on the man that did her wrong. Though the song is still more cynical towards the woman she believes took her ex-boyfriend, backtracking from the slut-shaming is ultimately a great move for Swift, who is realigning herself with the feminist beliefs that caused her to rerecord her albums in the first place.
The songs that emerged as era-defining were apologetic post-breakup ballad “Back to December,” heart-wrenching slow song “Dear John,” and the intensely smitten love letter “Enchanted.” Straying away from the writing-about-evil-exes narrative, “Back to December” has Swift confess her fondness for what her ex brought to her life and apologize for being the one to have ruined such a beautiful thing, singing sweetly "It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you / Wishing I'd realized what I had when you were mine.” But the nearly seven minutes that is “Dear John” is quite the opposite of that dynamic, even calling it her “most scathing” song she has ever written in the prologue of the vinyl version of the album. Over some simple guitar chords and a pacing drum beat, Swift remarks the misery she went through by naively excusing her ex’s toxic behavior for the sake of love. With lyrics like “Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?” and “All the girls that you run dry have tired, lifeless eyes / ‘Cause you burned them out,” it is no wonder why Swifties were getting their pitchforks ready for this man, who people believe is John Mayer.

Of course, it would not be a “Taylor’s Version” album without the vault tracks, and those on this album continue with her theme of pinballing around different genres. From the shyly seductive “I Can See You,” which sounds straight out of a '70s spy movie, to the hauntingly beautiful folklore-esque “Castles Crumbling,” each of the six new songs offers a distinct vibe. “When Emma Falls In Love” is a lighthearted track about watching a girl fall head over heels for someone when she herself is the charming and irresistible one. The track opens with a stripped-back and delicate piano melody, but as the song progresses, guitars and a drum join in and build in complexity as Swift’s description of Emma also deepens. In the country-pop song “Foolish One,” Swift feels ridiculous for craving affection from someone already lovestruck by another, and in the acoustic guitar-ridden ballad “Timeless,” Swift sees a mirage of her life with someone while looking at a stranger’s old photos. The most standout vault track, though, is the sultry “I Can See You” because it is wildly different from anything Swift has released before. It kicks off with echoey, rippling guitar strums and muffled “ah”s, and her sound moving forward maintains a smooth and low tone throughout, as if sneaking around the dynamic instrumentation of the song. Over a groovy guitar riff, she confesses having her eye on someone across the room and fantasies of them in her head, singing “I could see you up against the wall with me / And what would you do? / Baby, if you only knew.” Though other songs on the album, such as “Sparks Fly,” tenderly speak of where her imagination takes her relationship, “I Can See You” has a more intimate demeanor in its lyrics and production, like that of “Dress” from Reputation.

Both of the collaborative vault tracks feature pop-punk icons and longtime friends of Taylor, Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy and Hayley Williams of Paramore. In “Electric Touch,” Swift and Stump sing of having blissfully blind faith in love despite how it has taken pieces of them in the past. The melody feels like a Taylor song borrowed a couple moves from Fall Out Boy’s early 2000s playbook, which works out to be a fun, pop-rock-adjacent anthem. The bright drums and shimmering electric guitar pace optimistically, like passing light posts while driving down a highway. Still, their voices are very different, which can initially be a mild turn-off but begins to feel like they complement each other and the song’s genre-blending quite nicely after a few listens. The other vault track highlight is “Castles Crumbling” with Williams, which uncovers a sore spot in Swift’s self-esteem. In a string melody that sounds like a brewing storm, they agonize themselves for building themselves to be bigger than they are and for not being all that people want them to be, crying out “And you don't want to know me / I will just let you down.” Not only are both of them women around the same age who call Nashville home, they also grew in popularity around the same time and were trying to navigate the music world as teenagers. Including this track now brings a new side to Swift’s vulnerability, and despite it being a grim and heavy song, her newfound security in herself to include it attests to the dramatic shift in confidence from the original Speak Now to Taylor’s Version.

As Swift continues to release her rerecordings, they will almost certainly continue to bring about the kind of nostalgia that smiles to both the old Taylor and the one today that cannot help but keep breaking her own records. Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) remains true to Swift’s first few years of adulthood, but her new tone delivers the type of forgiveness that only comes with time, giving grace to both to herself and the people she wrote about. Though she felt like she was unable to say all she wanted at the time, this rerecording speaks volumes to the powerhouse that Swift has built herself to be.

REVIEWSAfterglow ATXJuly 14, 2023isabel alvarez, taylor swift, album review, speak now, taylor's version, speak now taylor's version